Electrical and electronic equipment for a newly developed airplanes incorporate control and status monitoring functionality that require large amount of data to be processed in a fraction of a second. In order to implement this functionality and to meet aircraft requirements such as size, weight power and cost, the electrical and electronic equipment are often required to employ Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) microelectronics devices that offer high data processing capability and low power consumption, but are not necessarily intended for aerospace applications. While operating at high altitude, the aircraft electrical and electronic equipment is subjected to atmospheric radiation composed of charged particles, neutrons and other that can cause Single Event Effects (SEE) resulting in malfunction of the affected microelectronics device.
Many Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) embedded controllers, microprocessors, ASICs, FPGAs and RAM devices are vulnerable to Single Event Latch-up (SEL) when exposed to high altitude atmospheric radiation. Device latch-up results in system malfunction and ultimately permanent device failure. As the use of COTS devices on commercial aircraft becomes more extensive, the probability of SEL events increases.
Electronic hardware designed for space and aerospace applications must be fault tolerant, and traditional designs have used radiation hardened devices which employ Silicon on Insulator techniques for radiation immunity. These devices are expensive and performance typically lags in comparison to COTS devices. In order to make COTS Electronic hardware fault tolerant to SEL, additional circuitry is required to prevent the permanent device failure and to provide means to clear the fault and restore normal operation of the affected device.